Common Data Model for Financial Auditors : Part 2
The process of creating a CDM for auditors has asked more questions than it has answered. My initial idea was a finite set of common terms which would relate to the main general ledger followed by a complementary set of terms which would relate to the most typical sub-ledgers, day books or schedules. These sets could be expanded as additional variables were encountered which other auditors would find useful to be able to analyse immediately. But somehow I forgot about the auditors themselves. Audit is a marvellous world awash with terminology that does not easily skew into the average conversation in a pub, "Materiality" being the big one, in all its glorious forms and values, but also the nuances of "significant" and "non-significant, "complex" and "non-complex". This is before we even get into classifications like "Assets" and "Liabilities". In short, what had seemed like a discrete task was no longer quite so straightf...